The bright, spacious, and bold geometric forms of the Hospital Sant Joan de Rues are just what the doctor ordered. The new facility in Rues, Spain outside of Barcelona is part of a fresh wave of hospitals that focus on encouraging healing through natural daylighting and comfortable living spaces. Designed by Barcelona-based Mario Corea Arquitectura, the linear hospital fits in with its surrounding urban environment while working hard to infuse it with vital spaces like gardens and green roofs.

The hospital is composed of a series of six rectangular volumes that shoot off at perpendicular angles to the main corridor, which has a large, slanted roof that optically reduces the size of the building. These narrow volumes sit on top of administration and technical facilities, creating space for light and air to reach into the patient corridors. Clad in white tile, the hospital has a refreshingly light aesthetic, and it is connected with the surrounding city through multiple access points around its perimeter. Smaller atria offer entrances on a more human scale, which link up to a larger circulation corridor that connects to the patient wings.

In between each patient wing is a large green roof that is visible and accessible from patients’ rooms. These green roofs sit above more facilities below and are punctuated with skylights and light wells that pull natural daylight down into the space. Gardens surrounding the hospital infuse the urban environment with even more nature. Louvers on one of the south-facing facades protects the interior from overheating while allowing in light, while the large angled white facade shields the main corridor. Mario Corea Arquitectura received the NAN Award in 2010 for Best Energy Integration in Architecture.

LEAVE A COMMENT

NEW USER

CURRENT USERS LOGIN

2 Comments

lazyreaderSeptember 6, 2011 at 10:05 am

Healing through daylight and natural spaces, seems enlightened. Or they actually bother spending that time treating disease and injury they would not have to remain in the hospital. The front of the building seems to have some sort of garden with plantings so narrow you can’t walk through it. Traditional hospitals consisted of a campus of buildings with plazas with grids of sidewalks so even the most crippled patient could go through. And the plantings were relegated away from our walking path to places called “gardens” to be observed by the casual patient.

The buildings overall reminds me of Apple store or an airport baggage handling facility which is sort of the way we think of patients these days, spare baggage. The interior is composed of many ambiguous, illegible spaces which we call waiting rooms surrounded by facets of technology on the walls like the wannabe bridge of the starship Enterprise. Contemporary architecture eagerly thrusts humanity into a dehumanized future. These redundant gestures are the last attempts of architectural competence and as the 21st century progresses the more soulless the buildings become; and we wonder why people are sick.

jiuckSeptember 6, 2011 at 9:15 am

I have to say that this hospital is located in Reus, pertaining to Tarragona. So it’s not exactly at the outsides of Barcelona, it’s in another province. Both Tarragona and Barcelona pertain to Catalonia who also pertains to Spain.